


Our feet on the horizon

by HelveticaBrown



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 08:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14185425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelveticaBrown/pseuds/HelveticaBrown
Summary: Mending something so badly broken takes more than just a moment's meddling by Mildred Hubble. There are reparations to be made and truths to be told and Hecate's not sure she's up to any of it. Pippa might have other ideas, though.





	Our feet on the horizon

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a bit of a crush on HB since the 1998 series and so I was delighted to see that 2017's version is (if possible) even gayer and I've been wanting to write something for Hicsqueak since I watched season 1.
> 
> I've been tinkering away at this for a while and originally it was just going to be a one-shot, but it seems like it's going to be a little bit longer. No promises on an update schedule, because I'm spectacularly terrible at keeping to one.

* * *

Hecate measures out ingredients with machine-like precision. It’s the one thing guaranteed to calm her down and she needs that more than ever this evening. She pours the final ingredient into the cauldron, watching as the liquid bubbles and changes from green to dark red and then–

–the explosion leaves her stunned for a moment in more ways than one. It’s been more years than she can count since she’s had a potion blow up on her.

No, that’s a lie. She knows exactly when she last had a potion go this badly and the answer to that particular question starts with Pippa and ends with Pentangle.

To distract herself from that terrible thought, she works backwards, searching for the source of her failed potion and shakes her head when she realises where she went wrong. The potion called for whole comfrey root and she’d used ground. Then she notices the eye of newt on the bench instead of tail and she berates herself for a mistake that even Mildred Hubble would have been hard-pressed to make.

She waves a hand to clean up the disaster area that the potions lab has become and mutters a curse when only the tiniest spark of power is emitted from her fingertips. She’s blown out her powers, and if that isn’t just the perfect end to an utterly disastrous day, she doesn’t know what is. She sets to cleaning up the mess she’s created, sighing defeatedly when she notices the red goo and scorch marks on the ceiling. She’ll have to sneak back early in the morning, when her powers have, hopefully, recharged and the rest of the school is still slumbering.

She forgets for a moment that she can’t transfer, waving her hands with no effect, before dejectedly trudging down the hallway. It’s late enough that she hopes the walk to her room will be unobserved.

She’s left to curse her luck once again when she hears footsteps approaching.

“M-miss Hardbroom,” Mildred stutters, almost colliding with her. _Perfect_. Of all the people to encounter, it’s Mildred Hubble who had been both her tormentor and her saviour this evening, inadvertently rescuing her from revealing far too much to Pippa after setting her in her path in the first place.

Her first instinct on encountering a witness to this humiliation is to lash out, but she quashes that impulse with some difficulty. Instead, she injects the requisite amount of sternness into her voice as she asks, “What are you doing in the hallways at this hour, Mildred Hubble?”

She hardly pays attention to the long, rambling excuse–something about that blasted cat, of course–that Mildred embarks upon.

She allows herself a brief smile and says, “You did well today, Mildred.”

Mildred breaks off, staring at her curiously. “Are you feeling alright Miss Hardbroom?”

She’s hardly about to share the fact that she’s the very opposite of alright with Mildred Hubble, so she gives Mildred a look that has her standing up a little straighter and her eyes widening even further.

“Hurry to bed, Mildred, before I change my mind about seeing you.”

Mildred has just enough sense to realise her good fortune and she rushes off down the hallway, looking back only once and Hecate sighs in relief at her narrow escape.

Her relief, however, is extremely short-lived.

If the indignity of encountering Mildred hadn’t been enough, as she’s turning the corner towards her own chambers, Pippa steps out of the shadows. She can feel a blush colouring her cheeks and hopes there’s enough darkness to hide it, along with her dishevelled state.

She must look an absolute fright, and her hopes that the darkness is enough of a cloak are soundly dashed when Pippa reaches out a tentative hand to catch a lock of hair.

“Oh, Hecate. What happened?”

She manages a tense smile and attempts to brush off Pippa’s concern. “Nothing. I’m fine,” she says.

But Pippa clearly isn’t having any of it and her brow crinkles in a frown as she regards Hecate.

She’s enveloped in the cool, velvet swirl of Pippa’s magic and Hecate can’t help but feel awe at the power and the precise control. Pippa had, unquestionably, been talented when they’d been younger, but now, grown into womanhood and the fullness of her power, she’s truly a thing to behold. She’s left, a moment later, with the lingering impression of candied rose petals and she knows without even needing to touch it that her hair is in a bun perhaps more perfect than she herself could have managed.

Pippa is looking at her expectantly and Hecate’s not quite sure what she’s supposed to say. She eventually manages a grudging _thank you_ which doesn’t seem to entirely satisfy Pippa.

“I feel like we didn’t quite finish our conversation earlier,” Pippa says, after a beat.

Hecate doesn’t say anything; she just turns and opens her door and doesn’t protest when Pippa moves to follow her in. Pippa takes the seat Hecate indicates to her and Hecate turns away for a moment, hoping to regain a little more composure before facing her.

There’s a lot to think about and even more to say and Hecate’s not sure where to start. When she looks back on the past, she’s more than a little ashamed of the way she’d behaved. Her mother’s disparaging remarks about debasing the ancient craft of broomstick flying with something as frivolous as water-skiing had offered her a way out, an excuse to comfort herself with as she avoided thinking about what she’d done and what Pippa meant to her.

As for the way she’d delivered the killing blow to her friendship with Pippa, well, it couldn’t be helped: it had been the only way she could be sure that Pippa wouldn’t try to seek her out again. And if Pippa had been embarrassed, her sixteen-year-old self had been sure that it would be transient at most; it wouldn’t take long before all the other girls welcomed Pippa back into the fold, vindicated over their rejection of Hecate.

And to a certain extent, that was how it had played out. All the girls who had tormented Hecate at every turn had rushed to comfort Pippa in the aftermath of Hecate’s betrayal. The scorn they’d always cast in her direction intensified, and Hecate consoled herself that it was nothing more than she deserved. She was used to it, anyway. But what she hadn’t expected was the way that Pippa had continued to look at her, hurt and confused, for months and months afterwards.

With Pippa safely out of the way, Hecate had expected to be able to turn to her study of magic with renewed focus. Witchcraft, and the mastery of it, she’d always been taught, was about discipline, dedication. It was certainly not about fun, about pleasure, about the sheer joy of it. And yet, with Pippa, it had been all of those things. All the things she’d been taught from her earliest moments that she should not crave.

She remembers her first year of school, surrounded by children playing with their toy cauldrons, when she had already been drilled endlessly on the first ten chapters of Madame Gryphon’s definitive tome, _On Potions_ , a volume most witches did not even open until their later years of schooling. She remembers crafting an invisibility potion from carefully foraged ingredients and the teacher not noticing until two lessons had passed and the potion finally began to wear off. She also remembers the disapproval when she got home and the feeling of an empty stomach at bed time. Not because she’d been disobedient, nor because such an act could have put her at great risk, inexperienced as she now understands she was. Her sin, in her parents’ eyes, was failure, for according to Madame Gryphon, her potion should have lasted a full four lessons.

To be invisible, it seemed, would be the most wonderful thing. Later, she discovered that invisibility was not just about potions, that it could be cultivated too. A soft voice, plain, unornamented clothes, a dismissive manner on the very rare occasion when anyone tried to get close. She was able to move through the world largely unseen until somehow, against all odds, Pippa Pentangle of all people had seen her. And bathed in Pippa’s brightness, she found that the invisibility she’d longed for, the invisibility she’d spent so long cultivating was simply no longer there for her.

She’s shaken from her reverie when Pippa speaks.

“You still play chess?” she asks, running her fingers along the edge of the board on the table by the window.

“Sometimes,” Hecate murmurs, choosing to omit the fact that the board had been languishing at the back of a very high shelf in her wardrobe for a great many years and that she’d pulled it down in a half-trance yesterday morning at some point in the wake of Pippa’s arrival. There had been the occasional game in college, but she’d found none of her opponents quite so diverting as Pippa had been and she’d given it up.

“Shall we play?”

“Why not,” Hecate says, even though she can think of a thousand excellent reasons why they shouldn’t. Or really, just one very big reason. “Would you like some tea?” she asks, hoping to delay the inevitable.

Hecate has never liked change, but it seems everything is rushing onwards at a pace that has her head spinning and her bearings utterly adrift. Within the space of a couple of days she’s gone from not having seen or spoken to Pippa for many years to a hug and the promise of a conversation that she’s absolutely terrified of.

“Yes please. Milk and–”

“–two sugars,” Hecate finishes for her.

“You remembered,” Pippa says, and there’s a kind of soft hopefulness in her voice that Hecate’s not quite sure how to respond to.

Hecate feels a blush colour her cheeks. Hoping to distract herself, she says, “I’m afraid I can’t offer you any sweets, though. I don’t keep any.”

“That’s quite alright. I’ve had more than enough for today.”

Hecate almost retorts that she’s not sure she’s ever heard Pippa turn down sweets. However, she manages to hold her tongue in deference to the fragile peace between them and instead busies herself with making the tea, watching the pot even though it certainly doesn’t need her oversight while the leaves are steeping. For a moment, she’s tempted to leave it steeping a little too long, just to gain a few more precious seconds where she doesn’t have to face whatever this is. She’s tempted, but at heart she’s a Potions Mistress, and the thought of ruining even a simple pot of tea with anything less than the precision it deserves is anathema to her.

She can’t delay any longer, so she pours the tea out into the waiting cups and knows even before tasting it that it’s just right. That impression is confirmed by Pippa’s blissful inhale and sigh when Hecate hands Pippa her cup.

Hecate can’t seem to tear her eyes away from the sight of her and if she wasn’t blushing before, she certainly is now. She’s glad that Pippa’s eyes are closed and her attention is focused on the cup of tea in her hands, because she surely would have given herself away otherwise.

It’s been almost thirty years since Hecate has come face-to-face with Pippa. Plans of going to college together and then teaching together, dreamed up during late night conversations, had fallen by the wayside, abandoned to Hecate’s determination to rid herself of this dreadful curse.

Thirty years, to Hecate’s mind, should be more than enough to cure oneself of an infatuation. It _should_ , but it hasn’t been. Seeing Pippa again, seeing the woman she’s become, has brought everything rushing back and she feels just as much the fool as she had been back then.

It doesn’t help that in the intervening years there’s been no one who has come close to taking Pippa’s place in her heart. She’s had the occasional dalliance, but they’ve been a means to an end, mutually satisfying but ultimately nothing more than that. But Pippa, she knows, has not lacked for company.

Pippa’s always been in demand, a fact that Hecate had always been all too aware of. And she’d been certain back then that the perfect little world they’d built could only last so long before Pippa was drawn back out into the spotlight, where she was supposed to be. There were expectations there, expectations Hecate knew Pippa couldn’t help but live up to. Popularity, power, fame: they were all the things a witch of Pippa’s standing, a witch of her name should achieve.

She’d never admit to it, but she’d scoured the gossip sections of various low-rent witching magazines for news of Pippa in the intervening years. There were pictures here and there of Pippa on the arm of one wizard or another, the sons of powerful witches and wizards. Exactly the kind partners she’d always known Pippa was destined for. Certainly nothing like the tall, gangly, awkward daughter of an obscure witching family.

They play mostly in silence, sipping their tea and Hecate suppresses a smile at Pippa’s familiar opening gambit.

A couple of times she looks up from her study of the board and notices Pippa watching her intently and her focus on the game shifts to wondering what might be going through Pippa’s mind and she loses track of her strategy.

She notices, too late, that she’s opened her king to a final, fatal ending at the hand of Pippa’s bishop. She presses her lips together tightly, watching as Pippa’s hand hovers over her knight and silently wills her to make the move that will give her at least a brief reprieve. At the last moment, Pippa looks up and catches her watching. The smile that curves her lips is inscrutable and Hecate knows in that instant she’s done for and that her soon-to-be-vanquished king is the least of her worries.

“I believe that is check-mate,” Pippa says and her smile turns triumphant, reminding Hecate of all those times back in school when Pippa had tried to outdo her. It’s not a pleasant memory and Hecate frowns at the bitterness that wells up at the thought of the way their friendship had turned into something so ugly. It hadn’t been the way it was supposed to turn out; Pippa was supposed to forget about her and move forward with her life, but somehow, even in opposition they had still been impossibly close.

It had been her own weakness that was the cause of it all, her desire for things she was never meant to have. Even knowing that, she can’t quite stop the impulse that drives her to say, a little accusingly, “You always did have to win, didn’t you, Pippa?”

Pippa looks at her, a frown knitting her brow. “As I recall, you soundly beat me at chess every single time we played.”

Hecate can be delicate, can be precise when she’s needed to be, but where the feelings of others are concerned she’s never quite managed to get the hang of it and she can see she’s hurt Pippa. A single hug and the meddling of Mildred Hubble is hardly enough to mend a gulf that had been years in the making and Hecate wonders if she’s already ruined this chance.

“Well,” Pippa says, with an overly bright smile that Hecate recognises as utterly false, “shall we play another game? Give you a chance to restore the natural order of things.”

Hecate bites back the retort that automatically finds its way to the tip of her tongue, and instead resets the board piece by piece. Her magic is still dull and unresponsive and what would be barely an afterthought takes a couple of minutes and she glares at Pippa for a moment for her unwitting role in reducing her to this ridiculous state.

They begin to play again, but this time Pippa is at least as distracted as Hecate had been before and after only a handful of moves, Hecate has taken one of Pippa’s bishops and has a trap set for her queen.  Hecate can see there’s something building and a moment later, Pippa’s pushing the board aside, the game forgotten.

“Do you have any idea what I felt when you didn’t show up to the broomstick water-skiing exhibition, Hecate?” she suddenly exclaims. “All the terrible, awful things that went through my mind in that moment. I was certain something had happened to you, because I trusted that you would never let me down.”

“I didn’t think you would worry,” Hecate says, and she manages to keep her voice soft and even, despite the roiling guilt and shame that’s making it hard to breathe.

“How could I not, Hecate? You were my best friend.” Pippa fidgets for a moment with the one pawn she’d managed to take before setting it back down beside the board. “Was it true what you said? Why you did it, I mean?”

Hecate takes a sip of her tea, considering her words carefully. “It was.” She shrugs, aiming for nonchalance, not quite sure she’s succeeded. “I suppose I thought it would be easier to leave than to be left behind.” And it’s true, to a certain extent. She’d always expected Pippa to outgrow her, to finally wake up and wonder why she was friends with someone like her. But she’d also been certain that it was only a matter of time before she slipped and Pippa learned of her true feelings and she couldn’t bear the thought of her disgust. Or even worse yet, her pity, because Pippa had always been unfailingly kind.

Pippa shakes her head crossly. “I meant what I said, Hecate. I only wanted you.”

For a moment, Hecate allows herself to pretend that Pippa’s words mean all the things she’d secretly hoped for the longest time. Just a moment, though, because she’s not one to dwell on pointless fancies.  

She chokes on the apology she knows she should make, because she’s not sure she has the words yet to make amends for all the things she’s done. Truthfully, she’s not sure she ever will. Instead, she schools her face into a polite smile, the kind she’s used at every parent-teacher conference for the past twenty years or so. She’s relieved when Pippa reads it as the dismissal that it is.

“I should go; we have an early flight back to the Academy tomorrow and it simply wouldn’t do for me to fall asleep on my broomstick.”

Pippa stands and Hecate mirrors her, clasping her hands behind her back. They don’t hug this time and Hecate’s not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, because even after all this time, Pippa still gives the best hugs. She settles on relieved; her feelings are a little too raw and she needs some time and space to find a way to tame them and she’s not sure she could handle two hugs in twenty-four years, let alone twenty-four hours.

Pippa pauses in the doorway, fixing Hecate with a look that makes her shiver a little. “I’m not done with you yet, Hiccup,” she says and Hecate can’t help but notice the way her voice catches a little on her old nickname.

“Good night, Pippa.”

Hecate closes the door behind her, sagging against it for a moment in a way that anyone who knew her would say was most unlike her. She can feel her heart hammering away in her chest like she’s just finished a broomstick aerobatics display.

There’s not much left of the night and although she lies down, sleep never comes.

In the morning, when Pippa and the rest of the visitors from Pentangles are due to leave, she stays in the potions lab, steadfastly ignoring Ada’s summons, claiming a need for urgent maintenance after the Spelling Bee. And it’s true; there is still goop and scorch marks on the ceiling that are mostly attributable to the presence of Pentangles at the Spelling Bee, however not in a way that Hecate would be in the least bit willing to own up to.


End file.
